The Fool was falling. He was falling through space. He passed planets, suns, and stars. He saw galaxies and giant colorful clouds of gas. He wasn’t breathing, but after some panic, he found that it didn’t matter. He gave up and decided to just take in the beauty around him. The vacuum of space was bigger than his conscience could emotionally fathom.
He fell for several geological eons before he started hurling towards a planet. It was earth, but the Fool didn’t know that. He came through the atmosphere and his clothes started smoking. His skin started burning and bubbling up. Skin ripped off his body.
He was then suspended in the air in a blue sky framed by white fluffy clouds. A giant wheel floated before him. A crank jutted out to one side. Creatures that looked kind of like a cat, a rabbit, and a monkey struggled to get to the top of the wheel. This was the Wheel of Fortune.
A giant hand casually moved out of the clouds and using just a finger, activated the crank a half turn. The monkey flew off and fell into the clouds below. The monkey wore a priest collar and was holding a cross, but lost his grip when he was flung from the lurching wheel. A cat-like creature in a crown curled up on top while a rabbit hung on with dear life on the other side.
The Fool watched as the priest monkey climbed back up to the wheel and struggled to get to the top and when he almost got there, the hand came out of the clouds and with nothing but the pointer finger, turned the wheel a half crank, and the cat and the monkey fell into the clouds while the rabbit made it to the top.
I am the worker, the rabbit said to the Fool, I have been at the top the least amount of times. My time here is short, but I am always grateful to be here. The monkey is religion and the cat is government, they will fight furiously to be at the top. For a long, long time, they shared the top while I hung on to the bottom.
A giggle was heard from the clouds around them and a hand came in and flicked the cat from climbing back up the wheel. The monkey laughed as the cat flew past him into the clouds. The Fool stayed suspended in the air watching this madness.
You must be here to see where your luck will take you next, the monkey said. We are forever here struggling to keep our fortune. The rabbit sighed as he tried to pull himself up to the top, but shortly after he almost got there a giant finger came out of the cloud and cranked the wheel. The rabbit flew off and into the clouds.
You see that there are markings on the wheel, the monkey said as he climbed out of the clouds and back on to the wheel. They represent the four ingredients in everything, earth, fire, air, and water. If you can mix them right, you master alchemy.
The rabbit laughed as he too climbed out of the clouds, the word ROTA that is written on it just means wheel. It is a cruel contraption that just randomly alters a person’s course in life. A giggle from the clouds and the wheel is suddenly spinning again and all three animals drop into the clouds below.
Why are you so cruel, the Fool asked the giant hand, but there was only the giggle of a baby from the clouds above him. He realized that their fates were in the hands of a giant baby in the sky playing with a wheel while religion, government, and industry vie for power.
This reminded the Fool of the Hierophant and the pentacle. Except he could feel some empathy for the Hierophant’s servitude, and the pentacle only represented wealth, but this was just cruel. There were no heroes in this story. The Fool felt no empathy for any of this.
He would be the master of his own destiny. He didn’t want the cruel baby god to play him like a puppet. If he failed, he wanted it to be on his terms, and if he succeeded, that also would be on his terms. These animals were just in an eon long struggle to be the chosen one while the rest of us become the consequence of those changes. The Fool wanted no more masters.
He felt himself slowly lower into the clouds. The clouds felt cool and moist on his skin. He could see lightning somewhere in the distance. When he came out below the clouds he was over an ocean. He saw two giant baby legs standing in the deep sea. He saw a coastline and tried to aim for the sandy beach. He was going to figure out how to change his fortune.